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Good morning, readers.

The House of Commons resumes today — sort of.

As the Canadian Press reports, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described it as the first virtual sitting of Parliament, what is actually happening is the first videoconference meeting of a special committee struck on the COVID-19 pandemic.

The committee will somewhat mirror the routine of the House, although Parliament itself is supposed to be adjourned until late May.

The Liberals were previously able to muster opposition support from the Bloc Quebecois and NDP for just two virtual and one in-person sittings each week for the committee, which all 338 MPs are members of.

Only seven are required for quorum, as opposed to the 20 for a normal sitting of the House. The meetings will last between two and five hours a day.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer laid out on Monday his focus for the sitting. It includes the state of the nation’s emergency supply stockpile, the mishmash of federal economic benefit programs that allow some to fall through the cracks and to what extent the minority Liberals are backstopping provincial efforts to reopen their economies.

As the Globe and Mail reports, opposition parties received confidential copies of draft legislation over the weekend.

Scheer is seeking changes to the legislation, saying that incentives are needed in order to fill summer job positions the Liberals have promised.

“Right now, there is no link between those available jobs. There is no incentive to fill them,” he said, adding that the “program can be improved upon if there is that kind of link so that benefits can flow in a way that ensures that students are still getting experience and still learning a skill or getting hands-on training.”

However, student advocates pushed back against Scheer’s logic, saying students will ambitiously seek the scarce number of jobs available this summer.

Canada has done such a good job of blunting its first wave of COVID-19 infections it’s very much in danger of being susceptible to a second, third and even fourth wave of outbreaks, warned Dr. James Downar, a specialist in critical care, palliative care and medical ethics.

“The wave doesn’t even have to be that big to overwhelm us. If one per cent of Canadians got COVID-19 at any given time, which doesn’t seem like a lot, we would be grossly overwhelmed, like not even close,” Downar said in an interview.

Downar, who’s on the front lines in Ottawa treating critically ill COVID-19 patients, wrote the triage protocol for Ontario hospitals about who gets scarce ventilators. It’s not yet a published document, but what’s known about the triage road map is that patients aren’t excluded by age, but on how likely they are to survive if put on a ventilator.

These are measures that haven’t been needed yet, but Downar says it’s premature to declare victory. “We weren’t good, we were lucky – like, you have to write that 50 times,” he said. Leslie Mackinnon reports.

Restaurants opened up to dine-in patrons in at least three U.S. states Monday and the governor of Texas allowed movie theatres, malls and eateries to start letting customers trickle into their establishments later this week. (Associated Press)

Australia’s most populous state said on Tuesday it will relax some restrictions on movement as beaches reopened amid hopes a policy of widespread medical testing will help sustain a decline in new cases of the coronavirus. (Reuters)

The second round of loan applications for the U.S. government’s small business relief program has been slowed by computer issues at the Small Business Administration. (AP)

The United States faces a tough, messy battle if it uses a threat to trigger a return of all United Nations sanctions on Iran as leverage to get the 15-member Security Council to extend and strengthen an arms embargo on Tehran, diplomats said. (Reuters)

New York officials canceled the state’s Democratic presidential primary on Monday, prompting an immediate backlash from the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders and his legion of progressive supporters who had hoped to amass convention delegates and help shape the party’s platform in August. (New York Times)

Argentina has banned all internal and international commercial flights until Sept. 1 because of the coronavirus outbreak. Authorities said airlines should not be allowed to sell tickets for flights that may not go ahead in the next four months. (BBC News)

Cartoon of the Day

Patrick Corrigan cartoon

FINALLY

A baby octopus in British Columbia has helped a woman retrieve a lost engagement ring that went missing while swimming near Bowen Island.

As CBC News reports, 26-year-old Annika Parkinson-Dow decided to hire a team of divers last weekend to see if the prized ring could be found.

Close to giving up, the divers then discovered a baby octopus, deciding to follow it. Then the ring appeared.

One expert said it’s quite possible that the octopus led them to it: “Octopuses do like to grab various objects and leave them out in front of their little dens — so often that’s a rock or a shell. But there have been lots of reports of octopuses liking shiny things.”